AN appropriate tough response to the familiar annual extension to the illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe is now well overdue.
Last week, the US renewed sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe for another year and there seems no end in sight to this pattern.
As always, frivolous reasons are given to justify this diabolic extension.
The very reason for the economic sanctions was to see our economy ‘scream’, so that the ZANU PF Government would be alienated from its supporters.
And for the US to attribute our economic challenges to mismanagement is the height of dishonesty.
How Zimbabwe, small as we are, can be ‘an unusual and extraordinary threat’ to the ‘mighty’ US foreign policy, perhaps only God knows.
Of course we are used to this discourse; whenever Uncle Sam wants to mislead the world into believing that indeed Zimbabwe is a rogue State.
Yet we know that the illegal sanctions were imposed on us following the Land Reform Programme of 2000.
This saw many white landlords losing their monopoly over arable land as it was redistributed to blacks. This was a fulfilment of one of the main goals of the liberation war.
It is this principle of empowering indigenes, putting the responsibility of building their country into their own hands, which is anathema to the US.
And yet it is this principle of self-reliance which has seen us weather the crippling effects of sanctions.
But Uncle Sam would like to see such a nationalist government fall and replaced by its surrogates — and there are indigenes with black faces and colonial mindsets on standby.
Therein lies the root cause of our continued struggle against the cunning imperialistic forces.
These black indigenes must realise that they don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes.
Blacks fleeing Ukraine have a story to tell about how whites care about Africans when it comes to the crunch.
Overly trusting the Americans and their European cousins can be dangerous, as the Ukraine President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, can testify.
Banking on his ‘friendship’ with America and its NATO allies, the youthful ‘comedian’ took on Russia. His country now lies in ruins.
It is non-other than the Ukrainians, who at one time thought their American-backed youthful leader was a Messiah, who are fleeing their country.
But despite this, believe it or not, some blacks have acted self-appointed ambassadors in urging the US not to lift the illegal sanctions.
In December 2017, just after the emergence of the Second Republic, now CCC leaders Nelson Chamisa and Tendai Biti were in the US begging for sanctions extension.
To them, as people suffered because of sanctions they then assumed they would protest and vote for the opposition.
They have forgotten that during the liberation struggle, no amount of bombing would create a wedge between the masses and the cause of the struggle.
No sovereign State can be expected to tolerate those who deliberately betray national interest.
We, therefore, unreservedly support the proposed Patriotic Act, which will facilitate the criminalisation of treacherous acts.
We will not be alone in fighting traitors.
The US, through the Logan Act, criminalises those who connive with hostile foreign governments to harm the nation.
In the same vein, we fully back the proposed Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Amendment Bill.
This is a Bill intended to stop Civil Society Organisations, Trusts and NGOs from meddling in politics.
We are not against PVOs per se.
But we expect them to fulfil their humanitarian mission.
Regrettably they have become an appendage of the opposition and are at the forefront of the regime change drive.
We are under illegal sanctions and sanctions are no different from a declaration of war.
A war situation cannot be handled with kid gloves, as at times draconian measures may be necessary.
You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.